Beijing’s industrial strategy is pivoting from shipping low-cost physical goods to exporting “high-margin”, AI-enabled capability.
Goldman Sachs frames this transition as a “Go Global 3.0” phase – a structural shift encompassing infrastructure including data-center power gear and physical AI applications in robotics and factory automation.
Analyzing 11 product-based export avenues, the investment firm projects a total addressable market of $12 billion to $212 billion globally by the end of this decade across four buckets: Bottleneck Solvers, Technology Upgraders, Established Global, and Idiosyncratic Opportunities.
While the broader export narrative focuses on macro tailwinds, stock selection in this cycle requires granular scrutiny.
Specific component makers and assembly specialists stand to capture outsized market share, while others face structural friction abroad. Here are two Chinese stocks Goldman Sachs believes could emerge the winners of the Physical AI era.
Inovance
Shenzhen-listed automation firm Inovance sits within Goldman Sachs’ idiosyncratic opportunities category, where initial foreign expansion moves at a measured pace.
European industrial centers represent the company’s primary target for overseas penetration.
The bank rates Inovance shares at Buy with a 92.90 yuan (~$13.78) price target – projecting more than 50% upside from recent trading levels.
Rather than relying on topline sector expansion, its investment thesis hinges on pure operational execution.
Goldman Sachs points to the group’s rapid research-and-development iteration cycles, structural cost advantages, and product engineering parity against incumbent Western players.
For long-term investors, overcoming local integration hurdles in Europe will determine whether Inovance converts its technical competitiveness into sustained margin expansion.
Estun
Estun shares’ growth runs through Southeast Asia – tracking the offshore migration of its Chinese manufacturing customers rather than opening new territory.
Goldman Sachs puts the outside-China opportunity at $20 billion, with regional share expected to triple by 2030, growth that looks more like share capture than market creation.
Estun ships faster than incumbents are willing to in the region, winning early contracts, but has yet to build the after-sales infrastructure that turns a contract into a repeat customer.
That said, Goldman Sachs still rates Estun shares at Neutral for now, believing the growth is very real; all it needs is to prove durability to get an upgrade. Unlike Inovance, though, Estun does not currently pay a dividend.
The execution test
Goldman Sachs’ bullish thesis meets its first real test this week, as the World Robot Conference runs in Beijing from August 19 to 23, drawing buyers and integrators who will benchmark Chinese automation hardware against established Western and Japanese suppliers.
Inovance and Estun face different obstacles, European integration standards in one case, service-network depth in the other, but the underlying question is identical: can engineering speed and cost discipline convert into recurring overseas revenue once the novelty wears off?
Goldman treats that as a company-specific bet, not a sector-wide certainty.
The gap between a Buy and a Neutral rating on two otherwise comparable exporters is the clearest signal of how much execution risk still sits unpriced.
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